black cat's curses
by Aiko Isari
Summary: Blake Belladonna is not a faunus. AU
1. Prologue

_warning for death, racism (fantasy racism), violence, blood, horror, ptsd and seemingly minor ocs_

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Prologue - Fractures

She used to be white, like Weiss.

She used to be white and furry and warm, and someone loved her very much. And the worst part was that she still did. The worst part was that she could feel that love all the way from here, all the way through every painful scream and sob leaving her mouth. She could feel that sweet, heartrending power, begging for another way out, and that way was through her.

Oh, and it was freezing cold now, familiar in a way it should not have been because even in cold winters she had had the others to keep her warm in the before time-

which was only one time in her memory, she knew that but she appreciated this so much more-

But now she was all alone in here. Well, no, she wasn't entirely alone. She had three others. The crying child, the broken child, and her. Her other half. The one who had filled her with all of this strength that had burst out and exploded into wings and death and promises.

But now, now that time was over. The girl had reached out to her and begged. She couldn't remember what she begged for, not even in her dreams.

Blake Belladonna came into being in a rotting forest. Her parents knew this. She was only vaguely aware of it, but at the time, it hadn't mattered. What had mattered was being fed. What mattered was that the universe was noisy. What mattered was that she had started off alone.

Just like some other time, just like a time that she could not remember but she knew about because the light had known about it.

When she was old enough to understand color, she recognized that she was no longer the color of a snowstorm, but instead the shade of a night without candles. It was just right to see, to smell. She hated standing on all fours, but it was the only way to stand with even weight.

She was like them, but not of them. She had ears and tail, but there was purple in her fur, unlike the rough, ragged black of her father. But her parents didn't care. Her mother nursed her for the cubs that would come, little Licht and rough and ragged Danielle. Sweethearts both and hers to hold. Their scents mixed with hers and she was happy. She was alive and hungry most of the time, but she wasn't alone, so she was happy.

Even the voice in the back of her mind did not protest her.

Her mother dressed her in robes.

Her tail was safe to move that way she said. Her ears got a bow and they hid behind them. She was just a little girl, and in the cold forests, bundling up was smarter and safer. They would not know what she was outright: a Faunus.

Well, her parents were Faunus. She was other. On those many forms her father filled out, there was a box for other and he checked it with disgust and black pen since there was nothing else.

Blake didn't understand, but she was sent to charm the shopkeepers and the old women and that was her job, her role. She would take it seriously, and everything else would come in time.

Then a man with a monkey's tail (and she thinks so hard about something else, some monster) gets decapitated. And her sensitive cat ears hear every scrape, her eyes see the blood and she remembers and remembers and longs-

Her parents cannot console her. Her brother and sister cannot console her. Blake hates and hates and hates so naturally. Not the executioner alone, not the man for committing the crime, but all the civilians who merely take her coin and pass her bread. All who talk about their wives and their children, all the business people who just watch the blood seep into the dirt. On and on.

She hates the apathy. She hates herself for just watching.

Blake hates her small hands and easily imagines them with claws.

And there is a voice somewhere deep in herthat whispers that that would have been her with the rope over her throat and the blade falling down like a stone.

* * *

White Fang is full of animals.

Not Faunus, though they call themselves such. Since her father left they have changed into something less… right. They were supposed to be working peacefully for a new future. White Fang was a place where Faunus and human were meant to meet and converse, meant to find answers.

There was not supposed to be red Dust in vials, bombs and blades clashing with one another across rooms.

It is all wrong, this world, this everything. She misses her, she misses the conversation. She misses days where she was rarely dealt with hunger or cold.

Blake does not cry. She hasn't cried in years. Every time she tries she thinks of the begging Faunus dying slowly and no one looking. No one will look at her tears either, so why bother shedding them?

She bows her head to the stars instead, acknowledges the world is too big for her young frame, too big and uncaring to let the pain go punished.

Adam strokes her wrist. Adam kisses her and it tastes like ash and revenge. He wipes tears away that aren't there. "We'll get them back," he says fiercely, full of passion as the alpha, the head of all these wild brained fools.

Blake swallows. She nods, doesn't ask for clarification. After the other leader had gone, she had learned not to ask questions. She was as forfeit as the next Faunus.

Even years later, she wears a cloak. Even now that it's inconvenient, she dresses to where no one can see what she is. No matter how many rallies she goes to, no matter how many people she protects, there is no changing that hiding, scared little girl.

And as he touches her on that cold balcony, as his hands press where her mother used to like, as she thinks of Licht and Danielle another name comes to mind and it truly makes her weep.

Hikari. Her queen. Her everything. Who would love her no matter her scars and heavy eyes. Who loved her and who had consigned her to this.

And now, Blake Belladonna, remembering the red flowing weakly between her fingers, knows why.

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 _ **A/N:** _And Mami! Last fic for tonight. Ao3 for tomorrow, honest. it's late. Hope you enjoy!

Challenges: Presents Under the Tree!, crossover boot camp prompt tender, Advent 2017 - write a movie verse, trick or treat day 3 - write outside your comfort zone, Advent 2016, write a crossover, Mega Prompts Word prompt 318.


	2. Chapter 1

_Warnings: Violence, abusive relationship, trauma, abandonment issues_

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 _Chapter One - Departures_

Surely, surely, Yagami Hikari doesn't exist in this world.

Why would she exist? Why wouldn't she, if Tailmon was here, just in a different form?

Does she want Yagami Hikari, _her_ Yagami Hikari, in this world with her to hurt her again? Or to be sorry and to make things right? Does she want the risk of either of these things and what they'll bring her?

The answer is obvious: of course she does. Of course she wants this, her, them. She misses that, she misses everything about that, even the pain because the pain had been something that she knew, something that she had chosen to bear. Of course she wants it.

And it's not coming from Adam, nor the White Fang.

Sienna is tired of kindness, of trying to be good, and Blake cannot blame her for it. But Hikari would not trust a man with a fast sword and a false contriteness. She would only trust what he actually did, and what Adam does is kill and hurt for power and not change.

And she thinks, she hopes Sienna knows that. Hikari would know, but then, the closer he got, the more likely she would destroy him without hesitation. She had with Vamdemon, and she hadn't even known all of Vamdemon's horrors, and it hadn't mattered.

So it wouldn't matter now, if Yagami Hikari existed here. Which she might.

But Tailmon -Blake- doesn't know what good that will bring. Will it bring bad? Is she looking for her?

Is anyone looking for her?

Adam assures her no one is because no one but he was looking out for her at all. Not even her parents

Blake accepts these words because, really, if anyone deserves to be abandoned, it's her. But Adam won't abandon her. He'll throw her away and that's different from leaving a person behind. Like she left her family behind. But it was for their own safety, and she promises to return. She promises to finish her work with Sienna and return as quickly as she can. It's only fair and right, after all.

Sienna nods at her as she passes and as always, Blake follows, Adam, because for all his wrongs he has taught her things. Her semblance would be meek, ordinary, untested, without him.

But the others too. They are close to her, piling in tattered blankets to keep warm, throwing old coats and human made good stolen goods together. Communal showers, sacred rites, happy moments with children, White Fang shares them all. And there are many.

He does not.

If there is any proof that Adam is not White Fang, it is this: Adam does not share. He does not commune. He possesses.

He is not of us, Sienna tells her. Use him, nothing more.

Blake thinks of using, thinks of a monster, but nods anyway. How can you use something that isn't a weapon? She wants to ask but she doesn't. She chooses not to and continues to use.

Or it is her little brother and sister who will be. And she cannot allow that, not with how hard her father has worked to keep them free. Not with how small and frozen they are. Not with that distinct sinking feeling that she had separated them before, and that that had been wrong of her, even if it hadn't been her choice.

But at the same time, how much more can she take really? Tailmon had much more endurance because she had forgotten, pushed away the idea of anything else, anything better.

Blake has both and so she can't.

* * *

One day, enough is enough.

One day, she reaches that tipping point.

She leaves him on the train. She leaves Adam, breathing in smoke and Dust and pain. Leaves behind his shouts and curses, his vows to make her pay, to find her and watch her burn, to rip off her siblings' skin and bones and more, so much more, so many more.

She leaves his torn apart eyes behind and is glad, so glad for a breath. The rest are heavy with fear, the what-ifs crumbling in her stomach and taking up space.

But he nurses in her. His hatred, the SDC buried into his skin, into her comrade's backs and stomach alike, burns in her. She thinks of the rope and the blade and her hatred burns.

But she draws her robe, finds a bow, and blends into the world of humans, where Grimm breathe despair into fairy tales, turning them black and white and cold.

(She screams her pain, her hope, her love against the world. Something screams back.)

And that is how she reaches Beacon, clothes almost destroyed underneath the remains of the robe, fangs sharp and mouth dry. She doesn't go to them for school. She goes to them for food, for water, for a green anything.

"Please," she begs Glynda Goodwitch.

It's not like begging to Vamdemon at all. He was smug, she is… pitying.

In no lifetime could Blake remember loving pity, wanting pity, but not being able to use it. She uses it.

"Please," she begs the human. "Help me."

Glynda does, pulls her inside like she doesn't have fleas or death or baby Grimm in her broken shoes.

If she's honest, she doesn't even remember how she got up here. Later she'll remember that people have to take the same air ship to reach it.

But she is not Faunus. She is Other. She can perform miracles that no one else can do anything but dream of.

Within days, curled up in an empty dorm, she is approached by a man with white hair and a cane. Tailmon fills Blake's thoughts with a single objective, a single notion buried deep in her guts,

 _Kill him,_ Blake's very being whispers. _This is all because of him. Kill him._

She's too weak to try of course. But she buries it, she waits.

 _She will,_ she promises herself. Absolutely. Someday.

Just not today.

"I would like you to join us here at Beacon," he says. She nods, and it feels like Vamdemon all over again, leaving her family all over again but she nods. Killing Grimm is easy. Killing Grimm is power. And power she will use to destroy everything he is and was.

Just like Vamdemon, Ozpin has made a grave error.


	3. Chapter 2

_Warnings: Reincarnation, trauma, implied violence_

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Chapter Two – Coming Home

Blake meets Hikari when she is split in two, one day.

There's a boisterous girl wreathed in yellow and an entire body of scrappiness and fire that makes her want to retch and hug her tight all at once, followed by a girl much smaller who is settled firmly around her weapon and for all the smiles on her face it only touches the eyes, but never greets them.

They are standing at the edge of a cliff that smells like wrongness, smells like a test of some sort and tests are meant to be failed. She knows this. She knows this well.

She'd met a girl who smelled like… something. Something cold, distant, locked away in a box somewhere. Blake thinks of home in her Hikari's arms, home in her siblings' chatter over a bread crust with fruit, home over her father's rumbling sounds.

Her voice had snapped her out of the reveries and Blake had remembered in an instant.

Weiss Schnee, supposed heir to the Schnee Dust Corporation. The Schnee. Those the White Fang fled from. Those Adam despised and hungered to eat. Like he should be allowed to eat them. The white to her black.

She looked Weiss in the eyes and scoffed and saw herself mirrored there, the her with hard eyes, the her before Wizarmon, the her before Hikari. The one that had given up yearning for anything of her own will.

Blake is torn between pity and anger, because what good had the pity been? It had been the anger that pushed the world into action, that had started her frozen time?

Besides, the fire was more interesting to her, more exciting, more lived.

Yang, her name was. She was not the Hikari of old, the little innocent trusting girl. She was fire and recklessness and Taichi's will with Hikari's power and Blake yearned.

And then she flew.

Without wings, it was much harder than she'd imagined it would be.

But Yang was with her, and it felt good. Right. Present.

Her weapon, her clones, her life, was in her own hands and the world, it-

Buzzed.

Grimm. She was used to Grimm, she was used to despair and anger and rough things. She was not used to the heat of the roaring fire and her being welcome to it.

Still, as they soared and landed, it was an easy move to land beside her and feel right.

Hikari, she thought, righteous and free.

Only to watch as Ruby Rose danced and killed with the monsters with the smile of someone full of love for something ephemeral.

No, she thought, simply. Proud, loving, hopeful. Light. That is Hikari.

Or it was. Yagami Hikari was gone now, and would never return. But something she could hurt was still here, and so she did so, taking out her claws and burying them in throats that wouldn't bleed.

(What Blake, and consecutively Tailmon, wouldn't understand, is that someone could be everything and nothing someone wanted at once. So both of them could be the girl they had yearned for and loved, but in the end one of them wiuld be the Hikari she

…

Ruby Rose had always had dreams.

Dreams of a world where there were no Grimm. Dreams of a world where no one had to fight, but chose to. Dreams of an older brother who makes her think of Yang, with lots of smiles to hide the hurt underneath. They have monsters and dragons and they're heroes but no matter what she does or how she tries, everything ends with people leaving. Everything ends with someone dying or going wherever they came from and never returning.

Until one of those things is the brother who had burned and shone with the light she'd always wanted – that he'd stolen – and he had fallen into the darkness and never come back.

Or… she thought he hadn't. Sometimes, in Yang's arms, in Dad's smile, there he was, fond and proud and – it's okay, it's really okay, you don't have to be strong, this wasn't just your fault – ringing through her body and mind and into her Aura.

(Besides, her brother and his friend are two peas in a pod, a brother and a friend and people who love and their best friend is someone who died again this time and it hurts. So much.)

She breathed in and out and remembered that just because people said things didn't make them true. They'd said her mother was lost like they could find her, instead of saying that lost meant dead and dead meant never coming back, like the old world she had ripped apart in how, just how tired she was of being good.

Ruby loved being able to fight, though. She loved being able to to breahte and bleed and hold Crescent Rose and be-

On her own.

Still, having Yang with her was better. She was strong, not stupid. She understood her own limitations. And she was lonely. It was better when Yang was there to be the buffer.

(Also they share dreams, they have the dreams together and the nightmares together even when they're apart and it feels like home every. Single. Time.)

Until, of course, she meets Weiss.

Weiss is prickly, rude, proud, mean, but her pride is something Ruby hungers for .She wishes she could have that level of poise when she wasn't shooting something or jumping trees or just plain alone.

She admires this woman who is barely taller than her but walks like a queen.

But it's Blake who takes her breath from her body and nearly kills her because her entire soul quakes and says.

Tailmon.

And that first night, when they're a rwby red stone and a team under her name, something falls down from the sky of the balcony and into her hand and Yagami Hikari awakens in a body that is not useless, in a body that is not pinned down by the world but is still less than human and she-

Breathes again.

Hikari without thought, knows what she must do, what she will do. What must be done, what will be done.

And her friends sleep soundly on, her new friends, parts of herself who she will give everything for. For Blake who she broke and hurt.

She doesn't touch her, she doesn't deserve to, but she smiles and tucks the blanket in tighter.

But Blake notices. She always does.


End file.
